Dressing (or stuffing as I often call it) is one of my favorite parts of the Thanksgiving meal, so when I came across a hundred-year-old recipe for Celery Dressing I decided to give it a try. This recipe makes a bread dressing that is embedded with lots of celery, and is nicely seasoned with sage.
Here’s the original recipe:

Most times when I make hundred-year-old recipes, I try to follow the recipe as closely as I can, but with this recipe I ended up making several adaptations. When I updated the recipe, I quadrupled it. The original recipe didn’t make much stuffing.
I used 1-inch soft bread pieces rather than dried bread crumbs. This recipe called for an awfully lot of butter (3/4 cup of butter for every 2 cups of bread crumbs), so I reduced the amount when updating the recipe. Maybe the very large amount of butter would work if I’d used dried bread crumbs – but even then it seems like it would be too much.
Finally, I didn’t have any onion juice, so instead of using the juice, I used finely chopped onions.
This dressing can be stuffed into a turkey. Addiitonal adaptations may need to be made (such as addiing both or other liquid) if cooked in a casserole dish.
Here’s the recipe updated for modern cooks:
Celery Dressing
This recipe makes enough for a 9-10 pound turkey.
8 cups 1-inch pieces of bread or bread cubes (I tore bread into small pieces.)
1 cup butter
4 cups chopped celery
4 teaspoons onion juice or 1/2 cup finely chopped onions
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
2 teaspoons ground sage
Melt butter in a skillet, stir in the celery (and chopped onions, if used). Sauté for 5 minutes or until the vegetables are tender. Stir in the salt, pepper, and sage (and onion juice, if used). Pour over the bread pieces and stir to combine. Stuff turkey with the dressing, then roast turkey.